Seattle’s Wire War: Why the City Can’t Wait for Electric Companies to Dig
As corporations drag their feet on burying overhead lines, a local editorial warns that procrastination is a corporate scheme to defeat the public will.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Seattle cannot afford to allow the electric companies an extended limit of time in which to place all wires underground, as has been suggested by certain interested parties. Procrastination is one of the favorite schemes worked by corporations to defeat the will of the people. It is now said to be their intention to delay the final date for placing all wires underground until 1906, on the plea that the cost is prohibitive.
From three to five years is ample time to allow for the completion of this work, and then the unsightly poles that scar the streets can come down. Throughout the United States all cities of the first class are legislating against the overhead wire system, and are removing the poles.
This 1903 editorial captures a century-old tension between municipal infrastructure goals and corporate timelines. Just as Seattle residents today debate the aesthetics and safety of power lines versus the cost and disruption of undergrounding them, this early 20th-century fight highlights how long the struggle for urban control over private utility monopolies has lasted.
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